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“But you were right,” Jane says. “You got it right.”
“Only because I have more experience with untrustworthy people,” Ivy says. “Janie, seriously. You were brave out there. You tried to keep everyone safe, even Lucy, all while not knowing what was going on. You got the gun away from Lucy, for god’s sake.”
Smoothing the sleeves of her pajama top, Jane lets this praise lap against her, cautiously. Then one of the police officers sticks his head through the billiard room doorway, glares all around, retreats again, and slams the door.
“I’m nervous,” says Jane.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Jane says. “I’ve never been questioned by the police before.”
“Ah,” says Ivy. “Well, all you have to do is tell the truth.”
“That’s just it,” says Jane. “What if I incriminate someone innocent by accident?”
“I think that in this sort of situation,” Ivy says, “you can’t help what you do by accident. And you’re much less likely to hurt innocent people if you tell the truth.”
Jane studies Ivy’s calm face. “The truth is that you told Lucy you had a gun,” she says.
“Ah,” says Ivy again. “But did you ever actually see that gun?”
“No,” Jane admits, “not exactly.”
“The police will ask you what I said and what I did,” Ivy says. “Just tell them the truth. They’ll conclude that I was only pretending to have a gun, for leverage.”
Jane swallows. “That does make me feel better. A little. Except that I saw the shape of the gun under your hoodie.”
Ivy glances down at her hoodie, which is flat now, with no gun-shaped bulges. She’s wearing canvas sneakers now too, and her hair is tied back in a messy knot. While Jane was fussing over Jasper and the household was waiting for the police, Ivy must have returned to her room and made a few changes. “Then you should tell them that too,” she says simply. “A shape under a hoodie is pretty inconclusive.”
“I want to know what’s really going on,” Jane says, holding Ivy’s eyes. “Personally, for myself.”
Ivy’s eyes are a soft, worried blue behind her glasses. “Is it okay with you if we have that conversation later? After the police go?”
“Will we actually have it?”
“Yes,” says Ivy. “I swear it.”
“Will you tell me everything?”
“Everything.”
“Is it going to upset me?”
Ivy takes a slow breath. She seems very tired suddenly, blinking eyes that look like they sting with exhaustion. “I don’t know,” she says. “The truth is, I’ve lost perspective.”
“I can help you with that,” Jane says. “If it’s upsetting, I’ll make sure to get really upset, so you can’t miss it.”
Ivy laughs. “You think you’re joking, but that probably would be helpful. That’s how much I’ve lost perspective.” Then she yawns. “Yeesh, sorry. Are you less nervous now?”
“Well,” Jane says, pausing. “I went to Ravi’s room first before I came to yours. He wasn’t there.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Well,” Ivy says, “I can see why you wouldn’t want the police to know that, but Ravi can take care of himself. He’ll tell the police where he was. You could complicate things for him if you say he was where he wasn’t.”
Ivy is right. Jane’s best course is to tell the truth.
“Thanks,” she says.
“Sure,” says Ivy. “It’s normal to be nervous.”
“You’re not.”
“I am,” she says. “I’m like a duck on the water. I look calm but my feet are working a mile a minute underneath. And I haven’t slept yet, so I’m basically a mess.”
“Are you sure Lucy has an accomplice?”
“I don’t know,” says Ivy. “She definitely seemed to be expecting someone besides us on the beach. She must be going crazy trying to figure out who took the Brancusi, and I was hoping she suspects her own accomplice. Because could she really believe that there could be three art thieves in the house at once? Lucy, Lucy’s accomplice, and someone else? Wouldn’t she think that’s too much of a coincidence?”
“You’re certain Lucy didn’t take the Brancusi?”
“Yeah,” Ivy says. “I’m sorry it keeps coming back to the things I can’t tell you.”
“But that’s why you taunted her, saying she’d go down for the Brancusi?” Jane says. “You were hoping it would convince her to name her accomplice?”
“Yeah,” Ivy says. “If she has one. It could be that the guy with the wet pants came to the house to meet her, and you saw the two of them entering the forest. But I doubt it.”
Suddenly Jane realizes something. “Ivy,” she says. “The police are going to ask you about the Brancusi. And they’re going to ask if you really had a gun. Are you going to lie?”
Ivy pauses, glancing into the light coming from the ballroom doorway. The ends of her hair glow gold. “I’m going to do what I think is right,” she says. “And after all this is over, I swear to you I’m going to tell you all the things I can’t tell you right now.”
Jane sits quietly with this for a moment, until she realizes two things. One, that she believes Ivy. Two, that she really can’t believe, despite guns and missing children and stolen art, that anything Ivy’s doing is truly bad.
“You know there’s a word for that shutter sound?” says Ivy.
“Huh?”
“That sound a digital camera makes. The fake shutter sound.”
“It’s fake?”
“Well, think about it. A digital camera doesn’t have a shutter. It’s just designed to make the noise cameras used to make, back when they did have shutters.”
“I never thought about that!”
“There’s a word for a design choice that incorporates a feature that’s now obsolete. I can’t remember what it is.”
“Think it’s a Scrabble word?”
Ivy grins. “I certainly hope so.”
Jane can’t explain it, but she feels more ready for the police now. She feels like she can handle whatever comes. “I’d like to know what word that is.”
“I promise that when I think of it,” says Ivy, “I’ll tell you.”
* * *
When the police yank Lucy St. George out of the billiard room, she trips over the molding, remaining upright only because one of the officers is gripping her arm hard. It seems to Jane that they’re being unnecessarily rough. Jane wants to be glad, but Lucy’s not a big person. As they haul her through the gold sitting room, she winces in pain.
She catches Jane’s eye. “Is Ravi in the receiving hall?” she asks.
Jane can’t imagine why she should answer. “I don’t think so.”
Lucy seems relieved. “Thanks,” she says as the police drag her away.
Jane wants to yell after her that she didn’t arrange it for Lucy’s convenience. That she would never do anything for a person who lies and pretends, then shoots a dog.
A surly policeman who smells like the sea comes to the billiard room doorway and calls Jane’s name.
The police officers, two men and one woman, have impassive faces, sharp voices, and a lot of questions. Jane tells the truth, and most of the time, her honest answer is, “I don’t know.”
“The man in the forest was eating an orange,” she offers at one point.
“Eating an orange,” her interrogator repeats in an expressionless voice, not writing this illuminating piece of evidence down. Jane and the police officers are sitting, a bit awkwardly, around one end of the fanciest billiard table she’s ever seen, with dusty blue felt and lions carved into the wooden legs.
